Hydrodynamic Analysis of a Novel Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) Platform in Regular Waves using OpenFOAM

Understanding the interaction between the aerodynamic loads on the blades and the hydrodynamic loads applied on the support platform is necessary for designing a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT). In the present paper, hydrodynamic analysis is numerically conducted on a novel FOWT platform using OpenFOAM. To this accomplishment, the dynamic heave and pitch motions of the sandglass-type FOWT platform are investigated under regular waves compared to the conventional cylindrical form. Then the effects of platform mobility on the rotor motions and its time-averaged power generation are studied. Based on the main results, the pitch and heave motions of the modified platform are significantly lower than the conventional cylindrical form. However, the time-averaged power generated by conventional FOWT is about 26% more than the novel form.